Singing Alto Against the Grain

Trying to trace some of these thoughts and memories and feelings is like trying to find a specific grain of sand.  You touch one and it knocks into another and suddenly you've got a handful of sand that just slips away.  I want to write about my voice, and I run into my physical throat issues, my mom's refusal to hear me, my anger and my fury at my family, at the world.  There are so many pieces to all of these things, and they thread back through the decades, holding me hostage in my newly-named body.  If I am to become who I really am, I must understand these threads and see where they go.  That's the true purpose of this blog.  I need to tell my story so that I can understand it.  

So this blog post will be about one thing.  My voice.  

As a little kid, I know that everyone loved my voice.  Somewhere there are yards of reel-to-reel tape with my voice, reading fairy tales to my parents, singing songs, being a kid.  All of my extended family adored me and wanted to be around me.  I was young, I was cute, I was funny, I was smart.  And I loved everyone.  

Have you ever seen dolphins swim along the surface of the water, jumping, splashing, and playing?  That's my true personality.  That's what my brain is like.  Of course, I am serious when I need to be.  But turn your back and my thoughts will turn to wordplay or an in-joke or something fun.  I love to laugh and I love to have a good time.  

As I got older, I did the same things that had made people love me all along.  I was smart, I was funny, and I said things out loud, all the time.  But my appearance had changed, and people didn't think I was cute.  My brother was new, and he was cuter, and then my sister, too.  I was older, and being smart wasn't as good anymore.  My voice got louder.  I was told to be quiet, to stop being a show-off.  It was like someone had turned off the sun.  

I hid a lot.  I tried being smaller, shorter, I tried doing as I was told.  I even tried to be cute and acceptably funny, but I just got frowns all around.  Nobody was interested in what I had to say.  My mom and my dad turned away from me.  

In school, I did everything right, the first time, no matter what.  I knew that my teachers were my only hope.  If I could please them, I might get some love in the form of gold stars.  So I made sure that I followed all of the rules.  My parents expected perfection, and I never got praised for it, only frowns if I wasn't perfect.  I felt deserted, like they had left me on an island to fend for myself.  I didn't know how to express any of this.  I just kept shoving my feelings and my sadness down into the pit inside of me.  

In fifth grade, I started getting angry.  Suddenly, the friendships at my school became cliques, and being in a certain group didn't just mean you were friends with different people.  It meant you were better or worse than other people.  I began to see the favoritism clearly for what it was, and I was infuriated at the hypocrisy (especially at a private Catholic school).  Anything that angered me tapped into my emotional well, and got amplified by a zillion.  There was no stopping that anger.  

One day while playing jumprope, one of the older kids gave someone popular a second turn.  I got mad.  I called them out, and said that it wasn't fair.  I went on strike for that recess, and refused to play or talk to any of the kids who were supervising us.  For the next week, I stood firm and furious.  

Somewhere in my box of artifacts, there is a note from the two seventh graders who were watching us, talking about how they are sorry and they really liked talking with me and wanted me to have a good time at recess.  I'm sure they had no idea what spider's nest they stumbled into.  I had no way of expressing the deep sense of injustice that ruled my everyday life.  When I saw anything in the outside world that reflected my mental chains and anguish, I reacted exponentially.  

For some reason, my class's friendships continued to polarize for the girls.  A new arrival caused a fight between two former best friends, and there were tears and parents called and all kinds of hubbub.  During a meeting between the girls, the principal, and one of the teachers, I stood up and talked at length about how the hierarchy worked, and how unfair it was that some people thought they were better than others.  I remember feeling calm and clear about what I knew and who I was in that moment.  I saw clearly what others could not express, and I was able to say it out loud.

I don't think it was any coincidence that I was moved to a public school the next year.  Suddenly, I was surrounded by five times as many kids, taking the bus by myself, trying to find classrooms, and immediately marked by bullies as easy, naive prey.  I didn't have the right clothes, hair, anything.  I was too tall and too smart and too loud, and I laughed too much.  I had no hope of fitting in.

I think that's when I started singing loudly.  

I joined the middle school choir that year.  I grew up around music, and always had a song running through my head.  I had already played a bit part in one musical, and memorized the entire score.  I loved to sing.  And I had a big voice.  

I was in choir for most of the next six years, and for that hour, I didn't have to worry about parents or grades or boys or anything.  I would just sing, and sing loudly.  I never hit the wrong note, always had the music memorized, supported my fellow singers and had a positive attitude.  But.

For this next part to make sense, you have to know what I started learning early on in my life.  I started understanding that some people were not as equal as others.  Public school really hammered these things home, and learning to sing in a choir led to me to some interesting conclusions.

Pretty is better than ugly.  

Short is better than tall.

Blonde is better than brunette.

Quiet is better than loud.

Feminine is better than awkward.

Soprano is better than alto.  

I knew that I could never be on the good side of any of these equations.  My mom had taught me through years of wincing and mean remarks disguised as "help" that I would never be pretty or attractive.  

So I opted out.  I called sour grapes.

I decided that since I was never going to be cute, short, blonde, pretty, and feminine, that those things were stupid and lame and superficial.  I scorned the cheerleaders and anyone popular.  This sounds trite when I write it out.  It's a Psych 101 move, but for me, it was the only way I could survive.  I knew that I would never be valued if we were measuring based on any of these things, so I decided to flip the yardstick.  I would value only those things that were unfeminine, intellectual, much more "real".  I would not look at the surface.  I would find "true" meaning - as I defined it.  

So I sang loudly.  I was proud of my voice and my volume.  I would not use vibrato or any "tricks" to sound more sweet or cute or feminine.  I sang.  I used my whole voice.  I expressed myself and sang enthusiastically, when most of the sopranos were trying to make sure no one heard their specific voice over anyone else's.  

During my junior year of high school, our chorus instructor asked me to demonstrate the soprano part of a particular song during class.  I followed his direction and, against my better judgement, sang the high melody clearly, cleanly, and with vibrato.  I was angry the whole time, but I also enjoyed the attention of the entire class, and I knew I was singing it better than most of the sopranos.  When I finished, he asked, "Why can't you sing that way all the time?"  I stuck out my chin, silent.  I didn't have an answer.  But I can tell him now.  Because singing that way meant betraying everything that I held dear, everything that kept me alive every day in that school, that life that I was barely surviving.  Being an alto and singing loudly meant something to me.  Doing those things was part of my identity.  I didn't have much, but I knew my abilities, and I took my place in that class every day, venting my emotions through my lungs, fighting the demons trying to suffocate my heart.  

I couldn't sing any other way.